I was getting worried about my little backyard bunny because we weren’t seeing him much lately. Then last night while we worked in the yard I could hear Casey calling me from the side of the house. I went over to see what he needed and there was my little bunny. Turns out he found a little friend that lives in our neighbor’s front yard. I had seen the other bunny a few weeks ago and I knew she was living in their azaela bushes. Our little bunny was so cute. He was running back and forth from his house under our deck to their yard to see if she was out there looking for him. We even saw him drink some of the water we put out for him. When I was watering plants in the front yard we got a few pictures of them. They aren’t exactly best friends yet and you can he is still trying to get her permission to hang out in her space. We can tell which one is our bunny because he isn’t scared of us. He comes really close to us, but the neighbor bunny takes off running if we get too close.
Last weekend I took some one month pictures of Kaylee. For those of you that don’t know, Kaylee is Jill and Mike’s little girl who was born in May. Jill and I worked together until she left me when Kaylee arrived. She is also one of my best friends so I am over there with her and Kaylee all the time now!
Since I enjoy photography and have my fancy camera I told them I would take some professional type photos of Kaylee. I have never photographed an infant before, or really any human. I mostly shoot animals which are surprisingly easier. Before Kaylee’s photo shoot I did some research online to figure out how to get a good newborn shot. Kaylee was really cooperative during the shoot, at least in the beginning. By the end of the day she was getting a bit annoyed with the constant moving and outfit changes, but I managed to get some good pictures of her. They looked much better after I tweaked them in Photoshop Elements. Now, I am a bit of a perfectionist so when I look at the pictures I see all the things wrong with them and really didn’t thing they were that great. I posted them on Flickr and gave Jill a CD of the images. I got an email from her tonight telling me she uploaded the images to Walgreens to have them printed. Then she got a phone call from them saying they couldn’t print the pictures because they were “professional” photos. So I have to go to Walgreens and sign a release as the “professional” photographer so Jill can print them! How crazy is that! So what if Kaylee was my baby and I took those pictures of her? What would I do? How do they know Jill didn’t take them? I guess I have to take the images on a CD or memory card to help prove I am the photographer. So maybe this should be my new career……. You be the judge.
I wanted to post a couple cute pictures Casey got of our outdoor pets. They seem pretty comfortable in our yard.
Here is the bunny making himself comfy in the yard.
Here is one of our many squirrels taking a little nap. I have never seen a squirrel lounging like this!
We went camping with Allison and Jason over the weekend. After our trip last year we had planned to go again, but it took us a year to actually do it. This year we really do need to go in the fall too. Last year we went to Jordan Lake and camped on a Friday night, but this year we went to Falls Lake and camped Saturday night. We made it out to the lake around 2 and drove around for awhile trying to find a site with a view of the water. Most of the really good sites were taken, but we managed to find one with a little bit of a water view and easy walk to the water. Allison and I once again were in charge of the tents and the boys gathered fire wood. Casey and I have camped several times since last year so I was pretty sure I could get the tent up myself this time. I worked on our tent while Allison opened their tent (it had never been used). Well, here I am putting the tent up. As you can see I didn’t really do too well at first.
But as you can see I did manage to get it set up eventually…. It only took two tries.
Allison and Jason’s tent was another story. There are tons of pictures of us trying to put the tent up. Here are a few highlights.
Is this right?
It looked a bit strange, but it was right. I guess it was just new and needed to be stretched out a bit.
Here is our redneck fire
Eventually Allison and I convinced the boys we should go buy some firewood so we went up to the front gate and got a few bundles. We tried the hobo dinners again and made a few improvements this year. We didn’t cook them for hours, cooked them on the coals and ate a bit earlier so it was light out!! The dinners turned out really well. For those of you that forgot here is what last year’s dinner looked like:
Here was this year’s dinner. Big improvement.
Enjoying dinner
And of course we had to have our smores!! Check out the concentration it takes to make a smore.
Even though we went with two former scouts we weren’t exactly prepared, but never fear the boys were inventive and made us lots of “tools”.
The shovel
The chocolate melter for smores
However the highlight of the day was Jason taking a bath in the lake!! Don’t worry folks he has pants on.
I slept a bit better this time, but I woke up several times because I had to pee. So on our next trip I either need to cut off all liquids at 3pm or I need to bring a diaper! I think I would have slept really well if I didn’t have to pee so bad and I was not walking to the bathroom in the dark. In the morning it started to rain a bit on us. There was about a 10% chance of rain on Sunday and sure enough it poured on us! So we didn’t get to have our breakfast (we did get a few breakfast marshmallows) and left a bit earlier than we planned. I didn’t get a nice group shot this time. Maybe in the fall. It was of course beautiful the rest of the day, not a cloud in the sky!
Yep, I am a slacker. No posts in weeks! I have lots to post, but have been too busy (and maybe a bit lazy) to actually post anything. I have some pictures of our Outer Banks weekend, but I haven’t taken the time fix up the pictures yet.
Our little bunny is still living in the backyard and so far my ugly fence is keeping him away from my flowers. I finally figured out that he came from the house behind us. I saw the mom hopping around their backyard one night and saw another little one that ventured into our yard for awhile. I will try to get some new pictures of him soon. There has been drama at the bird feeder too. The black birds discovered our seed and are eating it non stop. They eat all the seed in a couple days! Pigs. The blue bird isn’t much better. I hate to not put out seed because we have a family of cardinals that eat the seed a lot. I need to get pictures of them too.
Well, I do have a few pictures of my crew for you. They were all taken at night and apparently the batteries in my flash were dying so some of them are a bit dark, but still cute.
Here are a few of Tuscan and Moose snuggling at night. One night I woke them up with all the picture taking and got a few yawn pictures.
These are from tonight. JD loves his bunnies, but he has to have a gate between him and them. If that gate wasn’t there he would freak out!!
Well, my cute little baby bunny has chewed $10 worth of plants. 
Until last night he hadn’t messed with my plants and was sticking with just the grass and weeds. I guess I didn’t have anything that interested him until I put out some new plants this weekend. He seems to like the million bells I just planted and ate them to the ground! We put up a temporary barrier that I am sure he can get through if motivated, but I am hoping they aren’t good enough for him to work for and he will go back to the grass. Maybe if I distract him for awhile and let the plants grow back some he will forget about them…… doubtful.
Casey sent me an email today at work of a little baby bunny that is living in our backyard! He tried to take a few pictures, but the little guy was too fast. Tonight when I was cooking dinner I looked out the window and saw him in the yard. So I ran upstairs to grab the zoom lens. I got lots of pictures of him, the squirrel and a few birds. I didn’t see the finches this afternoon so I don’t have any pictures of them. I sat on the sink for awhile watching all the animals in the yard. The pictures are a bit blurred, but I had low light and no tripod.
Eating my Yarrow plant
Hanging out with the squirrel
Eating my Azalea
Eating some grass
Eating my weeds! Keep doing that little guy!
A few birds
A few weeks ago my friend Allison mentioned she was going to DC in May with some family and it put the idea in my head to take a trip up there this year to see the cherry blossoms. I love cherry blossoms and I have always wanted to go to Japan to see them, but I guess this will have to do for now. My neighbor across the street had a beautiful cherry tree in her front yard and it was my favorite tree in the spring. This winter she cut it down!! I really wanted to put one in our yard this past fall, but we went with the magnolia instead. The cherry trees grown out and we needed something that would grow up more and not invade our whole yard. So no cherry trees for me yet…. one day. Anyway, Casey didn’t really care about going so Melanie and I went up for the weekend. We both really needed a little vacation. We left Friday morning and came back today (Sunday). It only takes a little over 4 hours from here (assuming no traffic, which is rare). We knew Friday was going to be busy no matter what time we got there plus the cherry blossom activities going on this weekend.
The first 3 hours of the trip weren’t bad at all, but about 30 miles outside of DC the traffic slowed to about 30mph. Thankfully never stopped completely. I was really nervous about driving in downtown DC. The highway doesn’t really bother me, but I don’t even like driving in downtown Raleigh and this was like driving in NYC!! We managed to get off at the right exit and started into the city. For those of you that have never been to DC the traffic lights are on the SIDE of the road, not in front of you so you really have to be paying attention. It is a bit dangerous if you ask me! I am pretty sure looking ahead is a bit safer than looking off to the side all the time. Plus they apparently don’t believe in the left turn arrow which was frustrating. Somehow we ended up on the wrong street… we turned onto Massachusetts, but then it was K. At that point it wasn’t looking good, but after another turn we found Massachusetts again. We turned on 10th because the hotel was on the corner of the intersections, but we quickly discovered the entrance was on Massachusetts so around the block we went. I only got one honk which wasn’t deserved! I was turning right (with my signal on), but the traffic was backed up so I couldn’t turn. DC drivers love their horns and honk that at every little thing. Lighten up people! Anyway, I eagerly gave my keys to the valet and said good bye to my car for a few days. The hotel was really nice and we took about an hour to decompress after the stress of finding the hotel.
We decided to get out and see some of the cherry blossoms. It was pretty cloudy, but luckily it had stopped raining. We went to the Washington Monument, the White House, WWII Memorial and then decided to go to Hard Rock for dinner. I needed to get a shot glass for my brother so we decided to just eat there since we weren’t really planning on fancy dinners. We decided on nachos and dessert. It’s vacation! I also had a couple drinks that were very yummy. If we would have had any idea how many people would be out on Saturday we would have walked around a bit more Friday night. After dinner we went back to the room and were in bed by 10…. hey, we may be on vacation, but we are still old. Neither of us got much sleep thanks to the almost constant sirens and horns we heard all night.
Saturday we were up by 7 and were on our way to the Holocaust Museum by 8:30. We were there by 9 and sat in line to get tickets to the permanent exhibit. It was so cold! It would have been nice, but the wind was terrible. It took us several hours to warm up after sitting out there for an hour. The museum was really nice, depressing, but nice. I won’t even get into my rants about people right now and how anything like that could ever happen or how it continues to happen today. I am sure you don’t want to hear it. When we left the museum and walked outside we walked into about a zillion people (my estimate). I honestly haven’t been in crowds that size since I was in London years ago. It was nothing compared to NYC. I could not believe how many people were out compared to the day before! You couldn’t get anywhere and forget taking pictures because you couldn’t find an inch of DC that wasn’t covered in people. You couldn’t cross the street! Plus there were idiots trying to drive. What a complete mess. We eventually made our way to the Jefferson Monument and we took a break to eat some snacks. It was really nice to just sit and enjoy the view. After our snack we decided to go back to the hotel to get our coats. Of course this is when we got slightly lost…. We saw some nice gardens while we were lost, but after all the walking we weren’t cold anymore so we stopped at the Japanese Street Festival. I was really looking forward to the festival because I love Japanese culture. There were so many people there and all you could see was white tents. We had no idea what was at each tent or what kind of food they were serving so we gave up. It was disappointing, I was expecting more, but it was just too crowded for my taste. When we got back to the room we took about a hour to rest our tired legs/feet.
After our rest we ventured back out to see the other memorials. It was a lot of walking and at this point we were both getting a bit sore so we just took our time. The Lincoln Monument was packed and we didn’t have to energy to climb the steps! We took a few more pictures and decided to call it a day. We tried to find a nice, cheap place to eat dinner, but everything closed at 6! Finally we settled on Qudoba because it was the only thing open. There was no where to sit inside so we just got it to go and went back to the room. Once again we were in bed by 9:30…..
This morning we left around 8. After seeing the traffic yesterday we decided to get out early. In order to get out of town you have to drive throug the festival areas and it would have taken hours if we would have waited. We had seen all we wanted to see for this trip and we were sore so we left. We didn’t have any trouble getting out of the city since there was very little traffic.
I think on my next trip I will see the monuments at night. I have seen them all during the day a few times so I think it would be cool to see them under lights. If I ever go back for the cherry blossoms I will go during the week! It was crazy how different Friday was compared to Saturday!
Make sure to check out all my pictures HERE!! I edited them on our LCD tv, but about half way through them I decided the TV was too bright. The beauty of digital. It looks different on every monitor! So if some are took dark sorry. I was adjusting them based on the TV.
For those of you still reading we had to move the bird feeder. The squirrels were out of control so we put in in the middle of the yard. I didn’t really want a bird feeder in the middle of my yard, but it isn’t so bad and now the birds can actually eat the food! I just wish it didn’t lean so much.
Casey took these this morning. He finally figured out how to get to the seed!! He is crafty. He falls from the top and grabs on to the smaller lip and pulls himself up. So much for the squirrel proof top.
Today while “working” from home Casey got a few pictures of the squirrel trying to get the bird seed. I guess he has figured out he can’t climb the pole with the Vaseline so today he tried jumping onto the bird feeder. He jumped on the top which was made to keep squirrels away so he fell off just like he was supposed to! I am suprised he hasn’t tried to jump to the middle yet. I guess that is for tomorrow. I saw him tonight when I was making dinner. He had given up and was just eating seeds on the ground. So far he is the only one trying to get to the bird feeder, but I suppose it is only a matter of time. I like to feed them so now they all come our yard for food. 
I think they are cute!
Do you see him in the tree?
Finally made it to the top, but now what…..
